Washington, D.C. -- At the Gov 2.0 Summit today, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Managing Director Steven VanRoekel announced a suite of new tools designed to unlock FCC data and drive innovation across the public and private sectors.
"Today's announcement marks a major step towards our goal of reimagining the dot gov experience to better serve the 21st-century citizen," said Chairman Genachowski. "These new online tools will empower innovators and developers across the country to leverage government data in ways never imagined, creating immense value for the American public. This is an important part of institutionalizing change in government."
The suite of tools released by the FCC includes a number of APIs (Application Programming Interface) --interfaces that enable communication between independent databases -- for use by developers across a broad range of industries, including federal, state, and local government. The FCC also announced the creation of a developer community (https://www.fcc.gov/developer) designed to help drive future releases through feedback and collaboration.
"These tools are designed to maximize the value of government data for citizen shareholders," said Steven VanRoekel, FCC Managing Director. "Their release is part of a larger effort aimed at running a dot gov more like a dot com, with the same kind of agility, responsiveness, and innovation we expect from leading commercial websites."
The datasets and tools released by the agency include the results of the FCC Consumer Broadband Speed Test, which has tallied more than 1 million tests taken since the release of the tool in March. The FCC developed and released an API that unlocks the results of those tests and enables citizen developers to re-purpose the data in innovative ways.
The agency also released a tool that can match geographic location with government data aggregated at the census block level, the first tool of its kind developed by a federal agency.
The announcements are part of an agency-wide process to fundamentally redesign the agency's primary web presence at http://www.FCC.gov.
Below is a quick digest of each service.

Consumer Broadband Speed Test API

This API returns the Consumer Broadband Test speed test statistics for a U.S. county given the passed latitude and longitude. The statistics are grouped into wireline and wireless and are the number of tests, average download speed, average upload speed, maximum download speed, and maximum upload speed. This data is calculated nightly and includes all tests to date performed through the consumer broadband test.

Census Block Search API

This API returns the U.S. Census Bureau Census Block number given a passed latitude and longitude. The API also returns the U.S. state and county name associated with the block. Just about every major dataset in the U.S. federal government uses some form of census geography. The lowest level of that geography is the census block. This geography is highly nested, such that removing coded values from the right hand site aggregates to the next highest geography (e.g. from block to tract, and from tract to county). Providing this search allows developers to build applications which foster connectivity from their individual location to the full array of federal databases based on census geography.

FCC Registration Number (FRN) Conversion

Filers with the FCC must get a registration number (aka FRN) whose company names, parent names, and subsidiary names often change from state to state and region to region. The FCC is providing this API to increase the value of the transparency of broadband providers offering service in each state. Providing a single place for understanding the complex naming of these providers will benefit consumers. This API has two method calls: getList and getInfo. GetList call takes the parameters of a state's abbreviation or state FIPS code, and a yes-or-no for multiple-state indicator, and returns all the broadband providers in that state. GetInfo call takes FRN number of a broadband provider, and returns information about the provider.

FCC License View

The FCC issues licenses for use of the nation's airwaves and other purposes. License View API provides snapshots such as the number of licenses across different services, how many licenses different entities have, and how many licenses are up for renewal in the near future. The APIs represent a step toward reform of the licensing systems and improvement in how the FCC makes licensing information available to the public.

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